Date: Mon, 14 Oct 91 22:30:05 CDT
From: mbraun@urbana.mcd.mot.com
Hi folks.
At a recent record collectors' convention, I picked up a "DJ-only--NOT For
Sale" boxed set of vinyl issued by Arista called "The Complete Audio Guide To
The Alan Parsons Project." It is a 5 record set, containing two interviews
with Alan Parsons & Eric Woolfson (on 3 discs), as well as (vinyl) copies of
"The Turn Of A Friendly Card" and "Eye In The Sky." I'm pretty sure that
these were supposed to be the basis for "Do It Yourself" radio programs. I
figured "what the heck," and I transcribed it all... [As this posting is quite
sizable (>30K) &y might have to partition it into smaller pieces.]
Both interviews contain conversations with the Alan and Eric, as well as the
music that they've worked on.
The first interview covers the careers of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson
before the Project was formed, as well as their collaborative work up through
the "Eve" album. (I believe that when the interview was conducted, "Eve" had
just been released.)
The second interview is basically just them discussing selected songs from
"The Turn Of a Friendly Card" (at the time, their previous album) and almost
every song on "Eye In The Sky."
The material in brackets [] has been added by me (I've tried to keep this to
a bare minimum, usually just describing what songs are being played in the
foreground or background.) Start to finish, listening to the 3 interview LPs
(and the music included therewith) takes about 3 hours. Reading the
interview isn't *quite* the same as listening to it, but on the other hand,
this way, *you* don't have to suffer through Steve Harley singing "Judy
Teen." ;-) All spelling, punctuation, and transcription errors are mine. :-(
Enjoy!
m@
+-mbraun@urbana.mcd.mot.com-+-"I ran away saying no I ain't no I ain't no I'm +
| Matt Braun -- Motorola, | not like that I don't want anybody to be like |
| Urbana, IL Design Centre | that if anybody was like that I wouldn't know |
+---------------------------+- How Things Work." -- "Take Care Of Joey" [TStgn]
In the interview transcriptions below:
AP = Alan Parsons EW = Eric Woolfson
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Interview 1: Sides 1-4]
[Intro: excerpt from "I, Robot"]
AP: Getting into the recording business was something I really didn't imagine
that I would ever do. Although I had all the basic qualifications necessary
to do it, because I'd had a musical background of piano and flute at school,
and, y'know, I played a bit of guitar, and played with local bands, and at
the same time, I had an interest in electronics. I was always building radio
sets, and electronic gadgets at home, but it didn't really hit me until after
leaving school that I could combine these interests into one part, and make
something worthwhile out of it.
After leaving school, I spent a short time in a research lab doing
development work on television cameras. This was at EMI, in Hayes,
Middlesex, and I was eventually moved into a tape production plant, which was
devoted to the manufacture of mono quarter-inch tapes of commercially
available albums, and this is really where I got interested in hi-fi, because
this was the first time I had heard high quality sound systems, and One of
the albums that I heard during my time there was Sargent Pepper, and having
always been a great fan of the Beatles, I was totally knocked out by this
album, and I was determined to find out how they got these sounds, and just
how the whole thing went about, but the problem was that I'd heard that to
get a job in the studios at Abbey Road was very competitive, and I'd have a
very hard time. But, surprisingly enough, I just wrote a letter to the
manager, and within 10 days I was working there.
[Song: The Beatles, "A Day In The Life", from the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band", album]
AP: After I'd had a bit of experience at Abbey road, operating tapes and
running around for people, it wasn't long before my schoolboy dream was
fulfilled, and that was of course, to meet the Beatles. And I was sent off
to the Apple studios in Savil Row, where they'd been working on their "Let It
Be" album, with Ben Johns engineering. They'd had some bad luck with their
initial installation of their studio equipment, because it just wasn't
performing how they hoped it would, and they rented some stuff from EMI, and
I was basically sent down there just to make sure that everything was okay,
and to help out on tapes. I never really got to know any of them
particularly well at this stage, but I was just so in awe of the situation,
of actually being around them, and finding out how they worked. I think it
was evident there were problems within..within the group at this time, and
the film to a certain extent brought this out. But, for me it was just a
great experience to..to actually see them working and recording, seeing how
their ideas accumulated. And most of all, the last performance that they
ever did in public, on the roof of the Apple building.
[Song: The Beatles: "Get Back" from the "Abbey Road" album]
AP: Although "Let it Be" was the last album by the Beatles, as a group, to be
released, it was "Abbey Road" that was the last to be recorded. My
involvement on the "Abbey Road" album, again, as tape operator/assistant
engineer/what-have-you, I noticed that during the making of the album, you
wouldn't often find all four Beatles there at once. Often it would just be
Paul with George Martin, or George Harrison with George Martin. They'd each
come in to do their own individual parts of their own individual songs.
I think I was enormously impressed by the way that they didn't just use
normal conventional musical instruments to make a record, they'd use all
sorts of strange ideas, or strange processes with instruments. But, I was
just so surprised when I saw Ringo blowing through a straw into a glass of
water to get the underwater effects in "Octopus's Garden." And, likewise
on "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" the banging of the anvil for the hammering
effect.
[Song: The Beatles, "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" from their album "Abbey Road"]
AP: Most other artists at this stage were recording under more conventional
time scales. I mean a recording session used to last 3 hours, which usually
was from 10:00 to 1:00, or from 2:30 to 5:30, whatever. And, I often didn't
know from one day to the next, what I was going to be doing. I mean, I might
spend the morning helping out on a classical orchestra session, and in the
afternoon, doing a West End musical. And then, the following day, I might be
working with some progressive blues band. But it was all very valuable
experience to me, to have such a wide range of musical styles, being injected
into me. It was this constant learning process, finding out how different
people worked, and how different engineers and producers worked.
A great deal of Paul McCartney's first solo album was recorded at various
locations, such as his own home, and his farm in Scotland. But he did come
into Abbey Road to do a couple of songs. One of them was called "Every
Night," and the other was, of course, the classic "Maybe I'm Amazed."
[Song: Paul McCartney, "Maybe I'm Amazed," from his album "McCartney"]
AP: The "McCartney" album was soon followed by "Ram," and then the Wings'
"Wildlife" LP, which he came to do at Abbey Road. And this was actually the
beginning of my career as an engineer, as opposed to an assistant, because
every so often he would disappear with the band, and ask Tony Clark, or
myself, to make tapes for him to listen to the next day so he could assess
the situation, and decide what he wanted to do next. But one of the songs on
the album, I actually mixed myself, just purely for his purposes, as a rough
mix, so he could decide what he wanted to do with it. And, this was a song
called, "I'm Your Singer," which I'm delighted to say ended up being used on
the album--the rough mix that I'd done.
[Song: Paul McCartney, "I'm Your Singer," from his/Wings? album, "Wildlife"]
AP: Presumably having made some impression on "Wildlife," Paul asked me to do
some tracks on the following album, "Red Rose Speedway." Working with Paul as
a producer, [as opposed] to engineer, was a whole different thing to just
being the guy who sat at the back, rolling tapes backwards and forwards. As a
producer, Paul was always slightly doubtful about every sound that was
produced. He would say "Make the guitar sound better," or "make the drums
sound better," but he wasn't actually able to describe in technical terms what
he was after, which actually made the engineer's job very difficult. But at
the end of the day, the results were always there.
During the making of the album, there was a short pause to go on a European
tour, in Holland, Belgium, and Germany. And, I always remember the song "Hi,
Hi, Hi" being played in a totally different way, to the way it ended up being
recorded. I actually preferred the live version, believe it or not, but
millions didn't.
[Song: Wings, "Hi, Hi, Hi," from their album "The Wings Greatest."]
AP: Although there was some independent production work going on at Abbey
Road, a great deal of the sessions that were taking place were actually
in-house productions. Although the Beatles were considered an "in-house
production," because George Martin was a staff producer for EMI. There were
several other full-time producers, such as Peter Sullivan, John Burgess, and
Ron Richards, who had success with the Hollies for a considerable time. I
got involved with the Hollies around the time that Graham Nash left the
group, and Terry Sylvester joined. Among the records that I worked with them
on, of course, was the classic "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." And one,
that I actually felt was the best record they ever made, "The Air That I
Breathe"
[Song: The Hollies, "The Air That I Breathe" from their album "The Hollies
Greatest Hits."]
AP: I think I got into the recording game at a very exciting time. Once upon
a time, there was mono, then there was stereo, then there was 4-track, then
there was 8-track, and 16-track, and then the Lord said, "Let there be
24-track," which is where we are now. But it was interesting not only to see
the way that the studios evolved, but the way that the musicians evolved with
the change. I think one of the bands that made the greatest impression on me
in this particular direction would have to be Pink Floyd.
[Background Song: Pink Floyd, "Breathe," from their album "Dark Side Of The
Moon."]
My first encounter with them was on the "Atom Heart Mother" album, which I
was asked to mix for them. The album had actually been 8-track, but the
amount of special effects and machines we had running--I just couldn't
believe. It was like every machine in the whole building had been latched
up, so that we could use every conceivable special effect. And, at the same
time, it was probably the biggest challenge that I had ever been confronted
with: to actually mix that--to mix a Pink Floyd Album. But thankfully, this
led on to greater things, and probably the album that gave me the biggest
boost to my career--"Dark Side Of The Moon."
The band had actually been playing the piece in concert for a considerable
amount of time before we went into the studio to record it. But, there were,
obviously, some changes made to it in the studio. A lot of the songs
themselves stayed as they were, but they weren't recorded quite the same way
as they sounded--I mean, we would often just start with just bass and drums,
and add endless layers of guitars, and voices, etc. Which is the way
virtually that The Floyd have become famous for.
I think one of the reasons that the album took so long to record, I mean it
did take a whole year from start to finish, was the fact that we'd spend
hours, and hours, and hours, just getting a particular sound effect exactly
right. I mean, for instance on "Money," we had to get out a ruler, and
measure sections of tape, each carrying a particular sound effect, such as a
cash register, or a bag of money being dropped, or a piece of paper being
torn. We had to join these up, forming a seven-in-a-bar loop, which then
formed the basis for the backing track which the band played to.
[Song: Pink Floyd, "Money" from their album "Dark Side Of The Moon"]
AP: When the band had been performing "Time" in concert, it simply started
with Roger Waters playing the bass clicks which eventually come out of the
introduction that's on the record. But, I came up with this idea for putting
a load of clocks and timepieces which I'd recorded a few weeks previously, in
a local clock shop. And the idea was that all of the clocks would tick
together, which would be virtually impossible to record under normal
circumstances, but with a multi-track tape, we managed to sync them all up,
so that they would tick for a while and then all started chiming at the same
time. And then, out of that came the bass lick, and then went into the tune.
[Song: Pink Floyd, "Time" from their album "Dark Side Of The Moon"]
AP: I thought it was a little strange at the time, after the phenomenal
success of "Dark Side Of The Moon," that The Floyd came in to do another
album which was a complete departure from it. It was actually designed to be
an album recorded totally without any musical instruments--or any conventional
musical instruments. And, we started making this record with objects, such
as rubber bands and tin cans, and blowing through bottles, and rubbing
fingers 'round wine glasses, and things like this. But the whole thing was
just so *painstaking*, I mean we must have spent about a month in the studio,
at least, and came out with about two minutes of music. And everybody just
said, y'know, "My brain's going! I can't possibly go on any further." So,
it's a great shame the thing was abandoned, because it did have a potential to
cause a complete revolution in recording, but the effort involved in making it
would have just been extraordinary.
That was actually the last time I worked with The Floyd. They went on to
do "Wish You Were Here" and "Animals" elsewhere. But at this time, I was
beginning to get calls from people wanting to work with me as producer, as
well as engineer. And one of the first to come along to ask for me as a
producer, was Steve Harley. Steve had scored a fair success with first
"Cockney Rebel" [???] album, but it was really the "Psychomodo" album that
broke him in England, and the first single that was released, virtually the
first thing I'd actually produced, actually made the Top 20 in England, and
it's called "Judy Teen."
[Song: Steve Harley, "Judy Teen," from his single of the same name. :-) ]
AP: It wasn't long before EMI came up with another act for me to produce for
them. These were three guys from Scotland by the name of David Paton, Stuart
Tosh, and Billie Lyall. They teamed together with another Scot called Ian
Bairnson, and became known as Pilot. We made an album, and thankfully again,
the single that was released from this album also scored very well, and
completely broke them wide open in America. The record reached number two,
if I'm not mistaken. The song was called "Magic."
[Song: Pilot, "Magic," from their self-titled album]
AP: I was in a slightly awkward situation at this point, because I'd had two
successful records with EMI, and I was also getting offers from companies
outside EMI, which put me in a rather difficult position, because now that
I'd been working for EMI for seven or eight years, it was a little hard to
make the decision of whether I should go out and work as a producer for
another company. Thankfully, things worked out, and one guy who particularly
impressed me from the offers that came from outside EMI, was John Miles.
[Background song: John Miles, "Pull the Damn Thing Down," from his album
"Rebel."]
I'd just felt that he was an incredible professional--a great voice, and an
incredible sense of pitch, and also, probably one of the most underrated
guitarists that I'd ever heard.
The album we made was called "Rebel," and there was one song called, "Music"
which was released as a single in most European countries, even though it was
over five minutes long. But nevertheless, it established his name in most
parts of Europe.
[Song excerpt: John Miles, "Music (reprise)," from his album "Rebel."]
AP: I've been lucky enough in the last few years to have been nominated for a
few Grammy awards, and while I was in Los Angeles picking up the nomination
for "Dark Side Of The Moon," I was fortunate enough to meet a band by the
name of Ambrosia, who played me some of their material, which impressed me
enormously. I couldn't believe they were American, matter of fact, they had
such a British tinge to their music. And before long, I was mixing their
first album, which went on to do well, especially the single, "Holding On To
Yesterday." And later I worked with them as producer on their second album,
which was called "Somewhere I've Never Travelled."
[Song: Ambrosia, "Somewhere I've Never Travelled," from their album of the
same name]
AP: The most successful artist that, I think, I've been involved with, as
producer is Al Stewart. I'd actually been familiar with his music for many
years, having been a great folk music fan in the past. I spent a lot of time
in the clubs of London, going to see people like Stephan Grossman, John
Ranborne, The Pentangle, people like that. But it was long after that, of
course, that I met Al, and heard some of his material.
[Background Song: Al Stewart, "End Of The Day," from his album "Time
Passages."]
The "Modern Times" album kind of established his name for the first time in
America, I mean very few people really knew his name then, and it helped
develop a new style for him, which re-established him in England, and got him
out of the Folk-hero kind of image that he always had. He always tended to
base his music around acoustic instruments, mainly because of his folk
background. In fact, the only departure from acoustic instruments at this
point was to use the electric guitar up front, in solos, etc. But while we
were making Al's next album, I made a suggestion to use an old friend of
mine, Phil Kenzie, to put a sax solo on the LP's title track. And Al said
he'd never heard a sax in his music before, but kind of went along with the
idea. And the result was a song which virtually broke Al worldwide: "The
Year Of The Cat."
[Song: Al Stewart, "Year Of The Cat" (album version) from the album of the
same name]
AP: Following the enormous success of "Year Of The Cat," Al decided to move
to America, and spend a lot more time touring, doing concerts, etc. And I
think, "Year Of The Cat" must have had some effect on Al, because he took on
on Phil, the sax player, as a permanent member of the band, and two of the
songs on the next album featured him quite heavily. One of them was "Song On
The Radio," and also, the title track, "Time Passages."
[Song: Al Stewart, "Time Passages" from the album of the same name]
AP: In recent years, film directors, such as Ken Russel, and Stanley Kubrick
have become stars in their own right, and they're almost more famous that the
stars that appear in them. A gentleman who felt that this idea could be
applied to the record industry, not only with the artists I was working with,
but what was later to become the "Alan Parsons Project," was Eric Woolfson.
EW: My musical background was very different from Alan's, but as it turned
out, was not incompatible with the training that he'd had. At the time in
Britain we're talking about, there had been two distinct rock-n-roll camps:
one which had grown up around the Beatles, which Alan was involved with, and
the other, which developed around the Rolling Stones. And it was through the
Rolling Stones' Manager, Andrew Lou Golden, that I first came into the
business. I had just come down to London from Glasgow, where I was born and
brought up, and he signed me to a songwriting contract, and used me as a
session pianist. I found myself in very good company: people like Jimmy
Page, John Paul Jones, and later Eric Stewart, and Graham Gouldman. And I
went on to become a record producer, myself, though not with any great degree
of success. But my production activities brought me into the realm of Abbey
Road which was the arena in which I first encountered Alan Parsons.
[Background song: "Dream Within A Dream" ]
I had had an idea about making an album about Edgar Allen Poe's work, for
some time, but I didn't seem to have the necessary credibility as a producer
or as a writer to carry the project through. However, when I met Alan, I
felt his talents were certainly greater than mine in the production area, and
he was somebody I might certainly be able to work with and collaborate with
in achieving the realisation of this project. Fortunately, the idea appealed
to him, and Alan Parsons Project was born.
My original idea was that the album should be electronic, much in the lines
of a Rick Wakeman album. But Alan believed, on the other hand, in order to
do justice to Poe's work, we really would have to quote some of his poems and
stories. The first track that we recorded, which was based on "The Raven,"
ironically enough, was sung by a machine.
[Song: "The Raven"]
AP: I think I only realised when I got into making the "Tales Of Mystery"
album the contribution that I was going to be making to it. I'd always felt
slightly restricted in the past with other artists. I mean no artist likes
having their songs pulled apart. But as the partnership with Eric developed,
I found that I was being given much more freedom than I had been in the past.
And I was contributing to the records not only as a producer, and injector of
ideas, but also as a writer, though, not as a writer in the conventional
sense. The album enabled me to get an enormous number of ideas off my chest.
and just by--literally--toying with these ideas, I found that a composition
would emerge, and combined with the freedom I was given with Eric's material,
I think we created something which was totally new.
I think the musicians as well found that they were treading on new territory,
because this was probably the first time that they'd performed on somebody
else's album, as opposed to their own, and consequently, their careers didn't
actually depend on it. And I found that just about everybody who appeared on
the album, most notably the Pilot band, who played most of the rhythm section
material, were able to approach the album with a freshness that they'd never
been able to bring out before, because they weren't dictated by the musical
styles that they'd been used to in the past. I mean, there could hardly be a
greater contrast between `Oh-ho-ho it's magic" and closing track of "Tales of
Mystery And Imagination," "To One In Paradise."
[Song: "To One In Paradise"]
EW: We had intended just calling the album "Tales Of Mystery And
Imagination," but the record company specifically asked us to have an
artistic identification, so we called it "The Alan Parsons Project." And
people in the industry and the public appeared to think of this as being a
band. This was quite fortuitous, because during the making of the album, we
realised that there was more scope for this kind of musical venture, and we
developed many other ideas for making albums, based on different themes. As
Edgar Allen Poe had been described as `The Father of Science Fiction' it
seemed reasonably logical that we should, perhaps, go into the science
fiction area for the next album, and the result was the "I, Robot" album.
[Song: "I, Robot"]
EW: For Alan and I, this was yet more unexplored territory, as we did not
have an original work to base our songs or musical passages on, and we had to
create our own themes, and our own interpretations of these themes. I'm a
great lover of surrealism, and I try and inject this especially into the
lyrics, so that you're never absolutely sure exactly what the message of the
words is. In fact, Alan and I have a totally different perception of what
the song "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You" is about. I *thought* the song was
meant to represent the point of view of a machine talking to a man. Alan, on
the other hand, told me that he felt it was a man talking to a machine. And I
suppose that both points of view are equally valid, or equally invalid.
[Song: "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You"]
AP: I think a lot of recording artists generally are restricted, maybe by the
fact that they have only one lead singer, or they have one particular style
to follow. We've always been lucky, in that we can change with any
particular musical trend, and also we're not stuck with one given set of
people to perform on the records. I mean, for instance, on the song
"Breakdown" in the "I, Robot" album, we go from the voice of Alan Clark
singing to thousands of voices singing at the end.
[Song: "Breakdown"]
AP: I think through the various albums that we've made as `The Alan Parsons
Project,' we've established a couple of sounds that are identified with us,
in particular the use of choir and orchestra. I think this identity was
helped enormously by Andrew Powell, who has arranged and conducted all the
orchestration on all of the albums. And his contribution to the projects has
really been substantial, and we regard him as a third member of our team.
[Song: "In The Lap Of The Gods"]
EW: I suppose I really should own up to the fact that although these albums,
which are thematic albums, appear to be very carefully planned and set out,
that's not always the case. We may start writing with a fixed idea in mind,
but it never normally works out exactly the way we intended. In actual fact,
although I don't believe an inanimate object can have a life of its own, the
projects do have a way of taking their own direction in the recording studio.
I certainly had no idea that we'd have a Gilbert and Sullivan type sendup of
Pyramid Power.
[Song: "Pyramania"]
EW: We've been accused, as writers, of contradicting ourselves, by both
trying to put forward a point a view, for example Pyramid Power, and then
sending it up. But in actual fact, we're not trying to preach or teach
anything. We see ourselves as observers, and commentators.
[Song: "What Goes Up"]
AP: It's actually interesting to note that other producers have followed in
my footsteps, for instance Glen Johns with his "White Mansions," and more
notably Jeff Wayne, with "The War Of The Worlds." And although "Tales of
Mystery" did have a very definite concept to it, I think "I, Robot," and
"Pyramid" were less clearly defined thematically. On the new album, "Eve,"
we've made the theme even more elusive. I think if I was pinned down, and
asked what the "Eve" album is about, I'd have to say, "It's simply about
women."
[Song: "Lucifer"]
EW: When we embarked on the "Eve" album, our original idea was to take quotes
from famous women, and build different tracks around these quotes. We did
abandon that idea [chuckles] pretty shortly after we thought of it. But one
idea we did stick with, was an intriguing quote which we think came from Jean
Harlowe, who, when she was asked about the business of women making it in the
Hollywood film business, and questions about the "casting couch," she came up
with the comment, "You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas."
[Song: "Lie Down With Dogs"]
AP: If there's such a thing as a `typical Project track,' I think "I'm Damned
If I Do" from the "Eve" album would have to be one of them. It has the
ingredients which we've used in the past, like french horns, [and] the voice
of Lenny Zakatek--the one exception: I never thought I'd hear the words `I
love you' on a Project song.
[Song: "Damned If I Do"]
AP: I believe that right from the days of Abbey Road, and the Beatles right
up to the Alan Parsons Project, my life has been one long learning
experience. I've been lucky enough to learn from the best, and I think I'm
still learning.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Interview 2: Sides 5 & 6]
[Background Song" "A Price To Pay"]
EW: "The Turn Of A Friendly Card" album had the theme, obviously, of
gambling, and risk taking. The eventual title, was only arrived at some
considerable time after finishing the album. We had a series of working
titles while we were making it. Basically, I think, we started out with the
idea of calling it "The Game Players Of Titan," 'cause it was a different
kind of game playing, we had in mind to start with. We moved on to something
like "Options," which, although it's an unexciting word, in itself, it had
the advantage of, like "Pyramid" and "Robot," of being an `international'
word, which was easily translatable, or understood by other territories, and
kind of conveyed the idea of taking risks. But in the end, the image that
people seemed to be left with, the impression after having heard the album,
was based on the fact that they remembered this phrase "The Turn Of A
Friendly Card." And although it was clumsy, and didn't translate into
foreign languages easily, it seemed to be the right label for the `product'
and that's how we got the name.
[Song: "The Turn Of A Friendly Card"]
EW: I've often, in common with many other writers, been inspired at the
oddest moments. And, one of the things that did start the creative juices
flowing was actually sitting in casinos in Monte Carlo, with the din going on
of people with machines, people talking, people moving about, and all the
hustle and bustle that goes on there. It stimulated the writing of the track
in particular, "Turn Of A Friendly Card," and of course, there was a track
called "Snake Eyes"
[Song: "Snake Eyes" ]
[During the instrumental portion of the song:]
EW: The joke about the lyric of "Snake Eyes" is that he's betting on
something that you can't possibly win, because snake eyes is a bet which
loses if seven or eleven comes up, and seven or eleven is a bet which loses
if snake eyes comes up. So he's yelling `Snake Eyes! Seven-Eleven!', he
wants any one of the three, and any of the three is gonna wipe him out.
EW: This album dealt with many other aspects of the gambling instinct, and
the whole idea of "Games People Play" was based on a psychology book of the
same name, which dealt with human relationships in terms of people playing
games/playing roles. And, although the lyric has nothing to do with the
content of the book, I've often been inspired by titles, by the idea...
[Song: "Games People Play"]
EW: "Time" was yet another form of risk taking. To me, this could have been
sung by either one of two people: This could have been sung by an ancient
sea captain about to set off on a voyage of discovery, into uncharted
territory, or equally, by a modern day astronaut setting off for some
destination in space.
[Song: "Time"]
AP: The "Eye In The Sky" album is, perhaps, an exception to all the other
albums we've done in the past. Something that we've always, almost become
recognised for is that we've always, is the fact that we've always had some
form of theme running through the records we've done. And at the same time,
I felt that it was time to break away from that, especially as we'd had so
much negative criticism for being pretentious, if you like, for constantly
making concept albums. So, this time, we felt, y'know, "Let's just go into
the studio and make an album, and then decide at the end what it's all
about." So that's what "Eye In The Sky" really ended up being--a conceptless
album, but with a similar format to the past albums.
[Song: "Eye In The Sky"]
EW: Children of the Moon is a political statement. The idea of being
helpless pawns at the mercy of our political or religious leaders has always
struck me. And I find that current political events in the world, make this
song, as far as I'm concerned, all the more poignant.
[Song: "Children Of The Moon"]
AP: For some time now, we've been employing the talents of Christopher
Rainbow who has an extraordinary vocal range. And, I think perhaps we used it
to its very best effect on a cut on the album called "Gemini."
[Song: "Gemini"]
AP: The first side of the album closes with a song called "Silence And I,"
which is sung by Eric. And it was very exciting to make this particular
song, because for the first time, we used a really giant symphony orchestra,
95 pieces, all playing at the same time, and it was tremendously exciting for
all of us concerned, to have that number of people involved on one of our own
efforts.
[Song excerpt: "Silence And I"]
EW: Another trademark of the project is that if one side has an introspective
feel to it, we try and make the other side rather more upbeat. And the
second side of "Eye In The Sky" starts with one of our old standbys, Lenny
Zakatek, singing lead on a song which is not typically Project, it's rather
more rock-n-roll, and it's called "You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned."
[Song: "You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned"]
AP: "Psychobabble" was the first song to be recorded on the "Eye In The Sky"
album. It was actually started almost a whole year before any of the other
stuff was. We called upon Elmer Gantry, again, to do the vocal on it, and as
the title might suggest, for the middle section we used a lot of `musical
cliches' normally associated with horror films.
[Song: "Psychobabble"]
AP: I don't think a `Project' would be a`Project' if it didn't have a couple
of instrumental cuts on it. "Mammagamma" is one such piece. What's
interesting about it is that it's performed almost entirely by a computer.
That doesn't mean to say that the talent of the writer is any way over-
shadowed, because it took a great deal of effort to program the computer to
play it. But just about every note you hear is entirely performed by a
machine, as opposed to a musician.
[Song: "Mammagamma"]
AP: "Step by Step" is a song that, I think, we all thought at the time we
started it was going to be a very commercial-sounding cut. Again, it's Lenny
Zakatek singing the vocal. And I think one striking thing about the song is
the instrumental section in which Ian Bairnson, our guitar player gets a
really interesting sound by direct-injecting the guitar into the mixing
desk--no amplification--and the resulting sound is almost like a cross
between an acoustic and an electric.
[Song excerpt, spotlighting the instrumental section: "Step By Step"]
EW: The problem with writing songs like "Old And Wise" is that superficially,
they might be interpreted as being downers. That really wasn't the intention
here at all--the idea was to be uplifting. The pathos of the lyric actually
leaves me with a feeling of contentment, rather than a feeling of despair.
[Song: "Old And Wise"]